Shiver
by Bones365
Summary: The only shiver you need to worry about," he slid his hand down her neck, making her tremble, "is this."
1. Shiver

_A/N: Hey guys! This is a little story I though up about Quil and Claire after reading the book __Shiver__ by Maggie Stiefvater. It's really great and I recommend it to anyone, though there'll probably be a bit of a spoiler at the end of this story. Thanks for reading!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or Shiver._

I stood in the doorway and watched Claire.

It was one of my favorite pastimes, really. It was one of my absolute favorite things to do, like blinking, or laughing. Even from this far away I could smell her.

Cinnamon, vanilla, the musky shampoo she used, her toothpaste, a touch of lavender, the chemical smell of her whitening strips and the ever-present scent of paper, the tangy black ink of the book she was holding.

She was sitting on her windowsill and hadn't realized I was there yet. With Claire so into a book like this, I could do a strip tease accompanied by a string quartet and a strobe light and she wouldn't notice.

I snorted quietly. Maybe not. At seventeen, her hormones got the best of her more often than not, which was really like living in hell, sometimes. Not being able to touch her the way I wanted, to kiss her as long as I needed. _One more year_ I reminded myself. That's all until I could tell her everything. Have everything.

But for now I could watch. And I watched as her forehead crinkled, her brows furrowed, and her eyes began to shine. I wondered for a moment what she was reading to make her so mad, but then I smelled the fear, too, sadness, anger, until finally…

_THWAP!_

She threw the book with all her strength at the wall. It hit a cork-board with pictures of her and her friends on it, knocking it askew, before sliding down the wall and landing, crumpled, page-down.

My eyes flicked back to her. Her long black hair was hiding her face, and she was looking out the window at the falling snow. I smelled the salt from her tears.

I was beside her, instantly, scaring her. She let out a little scream when she felt my hand on her neck, then laughed when she saw it was me, despite her teary eyes.

"You scared me." She chuckled, wiping her eyes and moving her legs so I could sit down next to her. I did, and then hauled her into my lap so she was straddling my legs.

She lowered her head and her hair fell around me, filling my nose with her smell again.

"What's wrong?" I asked, noticing that she wasn't crying anymore, that the tears weren't actually falling. She ignored me and pressed her lips up against mine. The sweetness of it sent a burning rush through me, right below my ribs. I could feel the shaky adrenaline shoot through my wrists, making them feel weak and strong at the same time.

She opened her mouth on mine and the heat spiked higher. I heard her heartbeat speed up, felt her pulse where her hands were against my neck, sliding through my hair. She groaned.

"Claire?" I whispered into her. She nipped at my bottom lip, trying to distract me and almost succeeding. She groaned again as I grasped her hips and scooted her to perch on my knees, not out of reach, but farther away.

Her eyes were still closed. She inhaled deeply, and her eyes opened as she sighed the air out. She arched her left eyebrow at me, cocking her head.

"You totally just ruined that. We had a really nice moment-" I laughed out loud, cutting her off.

"Really nice? Maybe for you, who doesn't have to go phase in like an hour and share that 'nice moment' with Sam. He'll be delighted to know you're so enthusiastic with your tongue. Woa. What?"

Her eyes had tightened up and she had lifted her head to stare out the window. Her eyes snapped back to mine.

"You have patrol tonight?"

"It's a Tuesday." I nodded, still thrown off balance by something.

"Could you get someone to cover your shift for you? Just for tonight?" Her eyes pleaded into mine.

"Sure, sure." I said, pulling her head down to the crook of my shoulder. "Baby, what are you scared about? What's wrong? There haven't been any leeches around for months. I'm fine." That had to be what was wrong, right?

I felt her head shake "no" into my neck. She lifted her head.

"I just… let's stay in tonight? We can go to your place and I'll make you some dinner. We can rent a really bad horror movie." I was nodding before she was done with her sentence. Anything she wanted.

"Yeah, baby. Paul owes me, anyway. Why don't you go get you coat and we'll go?" she nodded back at me, sliding off my lap and jogging out the door. The smell of relief wafted off of her.

I watched her go, bewildered. _What the hell was that? _My eyes flickered over to the book she'd thrown, and I picked it up, glancing over the title before shoving it into my jacket pocket.

"Shiver" it said, the black words surrounded on the cover by bare vines and twigs.

Later, after Claire was gone home and I was sitting on my couch, I took the book out of my jacket and tossed it onto the coffee table, turning on the T.V. Something about the blue flickering lights caught the cover of the book, revealing something in the cover art I hadn't noticed at first.

A wolf.

I picked up the book and flipped the first page open, beginning to read.


	2. Shake

It was probably one of my all time favorite things to do. Read.

I was just settling into my window seat, cracking open the spine for the first time, running my fingers over the slightly raised and glossy words dripped across the cover.

_Shiver_ was the title. It was about werewolves.

This certainly wasn't the first book I'd picked up about wolves since learning that my best friend/boyfriend could change into one, but this one felt different. For one thing it was a romance.

I smiled a little at the thought, looking out over the new snow in my yard. I loved the cold, the snow. Quil used to take me and play in it till I was exhausted or got a fever or both. And I loved reading with the snow coming down beside me.

I flipped open to the first page, my excitement getting the best of me. A werewolf romance, just like mine. My eyes focused on the page, and I began to read, the words slowly leaking into my brain, replacing space and time.

Three hours and three-hundred-forty pages later, my heart was beating at my chest, grief spiking through my lungs, making it hard to breath. My face was screwed up in denial as I hurled the book as hard as possible at the opposite wall, not caring when it knocked against the picture board Mandy had made me for my birthday last year.

I turned my face towards the window, letting my hair fall in between me and the book. Suddenly the snow was threatening, so cold and harsh. My mind was yelling at me that it wasn't true. It wasn't _my_ werewolf that…

I jumped and squealed as a felt a hand on my neck, lifting my hair away from my face. Quil.

I laughed, trying to force myself out of the book. Taking him in. Seeing him helped, recognizing that he was not actually the character in the book, that it was fake, calmed my fluttering heart a little.

"You scared me." I laughed nervously, still trying to pry the sticky, sad feeling off of my chest. I wiped my eyes, hoping he didn't notice but knowing he did. I curled my legs into my chest so he could sit, and hoping he would hold me. Smiling when he did.

Sitting over him like this, I could get close enough to forget about the words running though my head, the feelings of Grace and the knowledge that he was gone…

I pressed my forehead against his, letting my hair curtain us from the rest of my room, maybe the rest of the world.

"What's wrong?" I ignored him. What he didn't know and all that, and really, it was just a book. Just fiction.

I kissed him instead, feeling his warmth. Hot, not cold, I reminded myself, flicking my tongue out to try and get closer to him, opening my mouth to breath him in. My Quil, my werewolf.

"Claire?" I knew he was going to push it, but I put up one last fight, biting his bottom lip lightly, scraping over it, trying to pull him into the moment. Instead he pushed me out of it.

I groaned as he slid me onto his knees, away from his body. I gave him a look, playing with him.

"You totally just ruined that. We had a really nice moment-" he started laughing.

"Really nice? Maybe for you, who doesn't have to go phase in like an hour and share that 'nice moment' with Sam. He'll be delighted to know you're so enthusiastic with your tongue. Woa. What?"

Sam. My uncle. Not the werewolf from the book. What was wrong with me?! Why couldn't I shake this? Besides that, for some reason, I'd tricked myself into believing the book more than real life. I didn't like Quil out in the cold. Didn't he know that he could stop…and that then we…

I wasn't even thinking in full sentences. And I was scaring him, but I convinced him to stay in with me. Being with him that night, distracting myself, drawing my mind into the real world out of the book one, I was normal by the time he took me home. I went to sleep, knowing that I would never, ever finish that book.

I didn't need the bad juju or whatever, and real life was so much better. I fell asleep in one of Quil's old shirts, holding his scent to me.


	3. Steady

It was 6 a.m. and I hadn't gone to sleep yet. And I really didn't plan on it any time soon. I had finally gotten to the end.

I wasn't as fast of a reader as Claire was, but I had been at this since about 10 p.m., and I figured it was time well spent because I had figured out what had spooked Claire earlier today.

I grabbed the book and ran the 2 miles from her house to mine. I slowed, reaching her window. I could just see the little lump she made under the covers and frowned. The smarted girl I knew and she still got sucked into fairy tales.

I slowly pushed the window up, swinging my legs inside, not closing it as I crossed to her bed. I felt the cold air blowing behind me, but I knew it would prove my point.

I peeled the covers off of her face, crouching beside her bed to see her. Her eyes opened blearily up to mine, her face scrunching when she felt the cold.

"You used to do this when you were little, you know." She rubbed her eyes, still half-asleep.

"Used to do what? Be woken up at un-godly hours by nosy, trespassing werewolves who should be asleep?" and that was Claire at half-power. She was a smart-ass, I loved it. I laughed, pulling off my shoes.

"No. You used to get so invested in the stories that you couldn't separate them from real life." She froze, gazing up at me. I scooted her over, sliding between the covers and pulling her full-length against my body, allowing myself to feel her curves and warmth.

"What?"

I held the book up to her face. She scowled, snatching it out of my hands and tossing it to the other side of the bed.

"It's a stupid book, Quil. I'm over it." She said, twining her legs with mine.

"It's not a stupid book Claire, it's phenomenally well-written. You need to finish it, really, the poetic cadence-" her hand came down on my mouth.

"First, I will not be finishing it. Second, you read it?! Third, where did you learn about poetic cadence?" I kissed her fingers before she lifted them from my face.

"First, your loss. Second, yes. I wanted to know why it bothered you so much. Third, I helped you pass your AP English class. I'm a pro." She looked at me, arching her brow. I continued before she could interrupt me.

"Let me get this straight. You read a book about werewolves that can't control their phasing, only phase in the cold, and are given a limited amount of phasings?"

"English pro my ass, do you realize how horrible that sentence was? How many times did you use the word-"

"So not the point. Do we really need to go back over shape-shifting 101 here? Because I will, but you could probably teach me better than I could teach you." She sighed.

"It just freaked me out, okay? What if you _are_ only allotted a certain amount of phasings? What if one day you're stuck as a wolf? I won't be able to follow you, just like Grace, because I can't be bitten. That only works with blood-suckers, and God knows I won't become one of those." Her hand snaked up the back of my shirt, pressing her palm against the muscles.

"Claire, it's not like in the book. I mean maybe for actual werewolves, but I'm not one. I don't become the wolf in my head when I phase. I'm still Quil. I still know you and can still remember words. As for the limited phasing thing, I think we would have heard about something like that before,right?"

She sighed into my neck, her shoulders relaxing a bit. "You're right."

I smiled. "Yes, I know." She pinched me, a little sting in retaliation. I tipped her head up towards mine.

"If you don't want to finish the book, that's fine. The only shiver you need to worry about," I slid my hand down her neck, making her tremble, "is this." She lifted up just enough to make contact in a perfect kiss. I felt the energy hum through me just as the pink of the sunrise began to creep over the ceiling.

She broke off our kiss, burrowing closer. "It's cold." She said. And I took her word for it, not able to feel it.

"Do you want me to close the window?" I asked, tensing, ready to get up. She tugged me even closer to her, tightening her legs on mine.

"You'll keep me warm."

*

"You'll keep me warm." I said, no longer afraid of the cold. I snuggled into his chest, smelling his musty, evergreen, earthy smell.

In the light of the new day, it all seemed stupid, that I would get so wrapped up in the story. Then I remembered what Quil had said.

"Quil?" I whispered, knowing he was almost asleep. He grunted.

"What did you mean, "you used to do this when you were little"? What do you mean? When?" Quil smiled.

"You get too invested in the story, Claire. At the end of Nemo, you cried because the fish from the dentist's tank couldn't swim free in the ocean cause they were in bags." He chuckled, curling closer around me. "I had to make up a completely new story about how some friendly dolphins came by and found these sharp rocks so that they could cut the bags open."

"That was very nice of you." I said, also snuggling closer, wanting to sink into him as close as possible.

"At the end of Cinderella, you were so upset because the mice didn't get their own castle. At the end of reading The Time Traveller's Wife I couldn't talk to you for days because you were so depressed."

I cringed, realizing it was true. Quil went on, his voice becoming softer.

"That one was the worst, because you loved that book so much. I couldn't snap you out of it. It took days to get my Claire back." I smiled.

"Your Claire?" I asked him, tipping my chin up. He found my lips without opening his eyes.

"My Claire." He mumbled before his breath evened out in sleep. I smiled, tucking my head under his chin. I was his Claire.

I went to sleep in the warmth, letting the cold touch me, but being held in his hot arms, completely content and unafraid. Just before I dozed off, I slid my legs along the edge of the bed, not stopping until I heard the _thump_ of the book hitting the ground.

I never finished it.


End file.
